Building Better Conversational Design for Your Chatbot - Journal

Building Better Conversational Design for Your Chatbot

The rapid growth in technology has changed how we interact with computers. All the innovation are happening simply to achieve a common goal, that is, to make it easier for the user to perform a task.

Technology should be practical, elegant, and intuitive. In a way, a great experience should be so natural that it becomes transparent. Here are a couple of conversational design principles we embrace to create better conversation flows for chatbots and to make a stronger connection with end users.

Give It A Personality

Chatbot is your digital brand ambassador. It is possibly the first point of contact which will help your customers to determine their feel about you so it is important to know how to speak to your customers, in the language they know. A chatbot can friendly and attractive if use right.

Did you know XIMNET's Chatbot, Xandra has got an Instgram account?

Be Clear With What Your Chatbot Can Do

Always put your customer needs first. Why are they coming to you in the first place? Part of the chatbot's responsibility is to solve your customer's problems such as recommending a product or as simple as answering a few FAQs. The goal is to make it clear and friction-less.

Keep It Short

Let's face it. Users hardly read anymore unless it is absolutely necessary. Detailed answers are exhausting to read. If the response from your chatbot requires user to think deep just to understand what it is trying to say, the last thing you will hear from them is 'goodbye'. We do not keep too many naggy friends in our lives, do we?

Talk Like A Human Being

One of the best way to humanise a chatbot is to include some sense of humour (sharing jokes is one example which we love alot). This can be expressed through the huge library of GIFs and emojis. Text replies are just so cold sometimes. Since users cannot see the chatbot's expression, good use of emojis can help to make a conversation less dry.

Keep Trying

Chatbot technology is fairly new so users do not expect your chatbot to hit all the right notes from day one. A large part of building a chatbot is retraining. We believe in constant improvement by learning from the conversations and get better as responding to users.

Conversational design is beyond user interface. The interaction between user and chatbot includes the use of language, intuition and emotion. So the question we often ask ourselves as is, "How can I be a great and caring friend?"

contributor

Josephine Toh

Joe is the Agency Manager of XIMNET Malaysia since 2018. She is also the UX Lead for an web building platform, XTOPIA.IO.